The death of Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi almost religiously worshipped, in 1873 deeply affected Verdi, who was then already being admired as Italy's greatest living composer and who was just going through a creative crisis. The Messa da Requiem is without a doubt a deeply personal composition by Verdi which expresses the innermost fears of the composer in being confronted with his own mortality. At the same time it is also a very "public" work through which the poet of the Italian people as well as the whole Italian spirit was meant to be honoured in a musical language which embodied the great tradition of Italian music and Italian culture whose disappearance Verdi felt that he was witnessing.